July 2025

Dear Donors and Friends,

It’s been awhile. Vicki and I visited Guatemala in November 2024 and again in March 2025. Since then Jorge Castro who runs the Guatemalan non-governmental organization that supervises about half of our scholarships and our program for kids with special needs also visited us here in Kalamazoo, while in the States recently raising funds for water projects. 

We’ve just updated the website which you can access by searching for derr.foundation. I invite you to do that, but let me share the highlights here.

Our program for kids with special needs continues. We have 130 students in the program so far in 2025. Vicki and I met with program staff in March (4 psychologists, a master teacher and a social worker). Some of our special needs students have minor learning or psychological problems that can be addressed in a few months or a year. Others have more significant learning challenges (vision issues and Down syndrome, for example) and will work with our staff indefinitely. We have also created a fund to be used to purchase lenses or hearing aides and advanced medical treatment when our team thinks this could be helpful. We have visited personally with many of these students and their families and are convinced our support is vital to their advancement and to the psychological health of these students and their families who are often entirely on their own in responding to these special needs. 

We have 75 scholarship recipients this year. The biggest change is that the number of university scholarships has increased to 19. One of the most gratifying features of leading the Derr Foundation is to be the recipient for all of you of the gratitude these young people and their families exhibit when they graduate with a degree in nursing or the law or agricultural science, and are looking at a future they still don’t quite believe is theirs.

We are in pretty good shape financially. Although annual giving has declined, several larger donations have been made in an effort to endow these efforts for 10 years after the  senior members of our  board retire (or expire).  We need another $200,000 to make that possible.  We want to be able to assure our younger board members and our special needs staff and scholarship recipients that the program is financially secure for many years.

If you are interested in making a planned gift or current donation to that goal, call or email me and I can answer questions and walk you through the steps required. And if you can, help us with an annual gift so we don’t have to begin using the endowment we are raising for a few more years. We currently spend on the special needs program and scholarships $70,000.00 per year.

Thanks for all you continue to do to make the Derr Foundation successful. Hard to believe we’ve been at this together now for more than 20 years. We’ll update you again after our Fall visit to Guatemala.

Warm regards,

Bruce Martin

President

Sister Celeste Derr Foundation